A Duty to Forget? The 'Hitler Youth Generation' and the Transition from Nazism to Communism in Postwar East Germany, c. 1945-49

In Soviet-occupied East Germany during the mid- to late 1940s,a remarkable but scarcely remarked-upon transition took place.Hundreds of thousands of young Germans who had previously beenmembers of the Nazi youth organizations, the Hitler Youth (HJ)and the League of German Girls (BDM) flocked to join the Communist-ledFree German Youth (FDJ), a unisex ‘united youth organization’founded under Soviet auspices in March 1946. This paper examinesthe experiences of this ‘twice betrayed’ generation,whose members rapidly—though with varying degrees of enthusiasm—switchedallegiance from Nazism to Communism after the Second World Warand ultimately exchanged life in one authoritarian youth organizationfor life in another. Drawing on archival and interview material,it first seeks to outline Communist attitudes towards denazificationamong the young in the postwar period, before going on to examinefrom a grass-roots perspective the experiences, motivations,and attitudes of those who exchanged their HJ or BDM membershipbooks for those of the FDJ. Despite, or perhaps because of,East Germany's strongly-espoused and rigidly dogmatic ‘anti-fascism’,open discussion of the Nazi past was—for a variety ofreasons—taboo during the immediate postwar period, particularlyamong the young. This paper concludes by discussing the reasonsbehind this ‘pact of silence’ between the Communistsand the ‘Hitler Youth generation’—and howit impacted upon subsequent generations of young people ‘borninto socialism’.     

Rethinking British Communist Party Women in the 1920s

Until very recently, writing on the Communist Party of GreatBritain (CPGB) concentrated primarily on the party's relationshipwith the Communist International (to which it was affiliated)and the Bolshevik leadership in Moscow. Far less attention hasbeen paid to the actual men and women who made up the ranksof the CPGB and sought to establish the party's identity ata grass roots level. This article examines the experiences ofwomen in the CPGB during the 1920s, particularly in relationto women's politics in the period, and with regard to the socialisttraditions that preceded and partly informed the CPGB's earlydevelopment. It argues that despite communist avocation of aparty of a ‘new type’, the CPGB inherited many ofthe existing uncertainties as to the role of women within socialistorganization.     

MacDonald's Parties: The Labour Party and the 'Aristocratic Embrace', 1922-31

The article tests the claim that certain Labour MPs and ministersin the 1920s succumbed to an ‘aristocratic embrace’.It begins with a short account of debates in the early LabourParty over social mixing, which culminated in the 1924 disputeover the wearing of Court Dress by some Labour ministers. Theextent of ‘embrace’ is assessed through the examinationof who wore Court Dress (and why), who was offered and acceptedhonours, and of patterns of residence, income and wealth, andparticipation in London Society, measured by club membershipsand appearances in the Court & Social columns of The Times.The article concludes by examining the usefulness of the ideaof ‘aristocratic embrace’ in explaining the defectionof J.R. MacDonald and others from the Labour Party in 1931.     

The Labour Party and the League of Nations: The Socialist League's Role in the Sanctions Crisis of 1935

When the Labour Party—influenced by the NEC and the TUCGeneral Council—decided to support League of Nations sanctionsagainst Italy in 1935 this signalled its recognition that itwas necessary to challenge the fascist dictators with collectiveforce. The way in which this decision marked the discreditingof pacifism within the Labour Party has been fully examined.The Socialist League—the organ of the Labour left—alsounsuccessfully opposed the sanctions policy. Nevertheless, existingaccounts have focused on its chairman, Cripps, and his refusalto trust the ‘capitalist’ and ‘imperialist’National Government to impose sanctions. Instead, this articleconsiders the Socialist League as a whole and highlights divisionsthat emerged within it over sanctions. The official SocialistLeague line demanded ‘mass resistance’ against theNational Government. However, a sizeable minority—particularlythose with overtly pro-Soviet affinities—decided to supportcollective security now that the Soviet Union had joined theLeague of Nations. These internal divisions seriously weakenedthe Socialist League case. They explain how the NEC–TUCwas able so conclusively to defeat its radical anti-capitalistarguments, thereby gaining a fuller mandate with which to developits policy of armed collective security before the Second WorldWar.     

'Stop the Flapper Vote Folly': Lord Rothermere, the Daily Mail, and the Equalization of the Franchise 1927-28

This essay re-examines the Daily Mail's campaign in 1927–8against the Baldwin government's decision to equalize the franchiseby lowering the female voting age to 21. It argues that theMail's hostility to the ‘flapper vote’ was largelya product of the passionate anti-socialism of its proprietor,Lord Rothermere, and not, as has been suggested, the culminationof a decade of anti-feminism. Rothermere was convinced thatyoung women would vote overwhelmingly for the Labour Party andentrench it in government for a generation. But attacks on the‘flapper’ in 1927–8 were generally confinedto the paper's editorial and political columns, and contrastedwith the much more positive portrayal of young women that hadbeen typical of the Mail's output since 1918. The example ofthe Daily Express, which supported franchise equalization, isused to demonstrate that it was Rothermere's idiosyncratic politicalpinions, rather than the ‘typical’ anti-feminismof the Conservative press, that explained the Mail's stance.The article concludes that the gender discourse of interwarnewspapers has been unfairly stereotyped by historians, andthat media hostility to young, unmarried women in these yearshas been exaggerated.     

Richard Crossman, Harold Wilson and devolution, 1966-70: the making of government policy

This article expands our understanding of devolution, the Britishconstitution, the Wilson government of 1966–70 and thecareers and attitudes of Richard Crossman and Harold Wilson.It shows that devolution was debated not as a simply ‘Celtic’affair, but as part of a long-standing Labour concern with reformingthe ‘machinery of government’. This interest—expressedby Crossman amongst others—became submerged by other eventsand pressures. Perceived nationalist successes and the conflictingaims of (divided) Labour parties in Scotland and Wales pushedout Crossman's little-studied desire to replace ‘nationaldevolution’ with regional devolution across the UK. Wilsonadopted the delaying tactic of a Royal Commission on the Constitution.Using a wide range of private, governmental and Labour sourcesfrom across the UK, the article shows the interchange of policydebate between London and the ‘Celtic fringe’. Inthe process, the article reveals both national tensions anda commitment to Britishness, stemming from shared policy interestsand also from wider cultural influences.     

Stalin's Sausage Machine. British Students at the International Lenin School, 1926-37

Between 1926 and 1937 at least 160 British communists attendedthe Communist International's International Lenin School (ILS)in Moscow. The aims of the school were to produce a new stratumof leading communist party cadres, young, proletarian, disciplined,and free of the taint of reformism. Using materials from theComintem archives in Moscow, this article assesses the degreeto which the school was successful in meeting these objectives.It shows that among the difficulties it encountered were thereluctance of the British Communist Party (CPGB) to lose theservices of large numbers of its best activists and the uncertainapplication of the lessons inculcated by the school when studentsreturned to Britain. In the short term, ILS alumni played acrucial role in the leadership of the CPGB at both nationaland district levels, and some were also drawn into work forthe Comintern or Soviet state organs. However, by the late 1930sattendance at the school played a reduced role in appointmentsto key party positions, and as early as 1943 there was onlyone former student on the CPGB's executive committee. Set ina comparative context, it is argued that the school's significancein Britain was largely confined to the ‘long’ ThirdPeriod of 1927–35 and rapidly diminished thereafter.     

The Reception of Sir Edward Elgar 1918-c.1934: A Reassessment

It is generally believed that the reputation of Sir Edward Elgarexperienced a disastrous reversal of fortune after the GreatWar. This has conventionally been explained by the changingmusical tastes of the public and by a postwar reaction againstthe unappealingly ‘Edwardian’ character of Elgar'smusic. Both claims, I argue, have been exaggerated. Examiningevidence from concert programmes, gramophone record sales, andBBC broadcasts, this article demonstrates that Elgar continuedto enjoy estimable popularity after 1918. The article also considersthe way in which Elgar came to be seen as an archetype of ‘Englishness’and ‘Edwardianism’ in music. With a legacy of virulentattacks on the composer's ‘complacency’ and ‘jingoism’,critical attention by the 1930s had been refocused onto a perceivedrural nostalgia within Elgar's music. This atavism complementedinterwar visions of the Edwardian period as a prelapsarian ‘goldenage’. The implications of these changing perspectiveson Elgar are twofold. They can be seen to have laid the foundationsfor our ‘mature’ understanding of Elgar's life andwork; and they suggest that our views of the interwar reactionagainst the past might require profound and wide-ranging revision. ^*I am grateful to Professor Hugh Cunningham, Dr Peter Martland,and Dr David Turley for their comments on an earlier versionof this article.     

Amnesty International in Crisis, 1966-7

During 1966, Amnesty International, which had been establishedin 1961 to campaign for the release of ‘prisoners of conscience’,was shaken by a severe internal crisis. It was alleged thatAmnesty had been penetrated by British Intelligence agents,and that it had channelled secret British government fundingto the families of political detainees in Rhodesia. Althoughthe organization survived the crisis, it resulted in the resignationof Amnesty’s founder Peter Benenson as President, andprovoked a re-evaluation of its operational methods. This articleoffers the first detailed account of this episode, drawing onhighly significant new archival and documentary sources.     

Charismatic Legitimation and Bureaucratic Rule: The NSDAP in the Third Reich, 1933-1945

This article deals with the history of the Nazi Party's officeof the Deputy Führer, Rudolf Heß, which after Heß'sflight on 10 May 1941 was renamed the Party Chancellery andled by Martin Bormann. It evaluates the structures and functionsof this important party office which had the exclusive rightto control government legislation. The Deputy Führer'sstaff was established before 1935/36. It consisted of severaloffices which influenced nearly all processes of legislationand tried to introduce Nazi ideology into all sectors of Germansociety. This was done by corresponding intensively with ministerialbureaucracy. Although the staff of the Deputy Führer andof the Party Chancellery acted in a very bureaucratic manner,the article argues that Max Weber's concept of ‘bureaucraticrule’ is not appropriate for analysing the radicalizationof the Nazi régime throughout the Second World War becausethis Weberian ideal type tends to neglect social practices.The same is true for Weber's concept of ‘charismatic rule’which only offers fruitful insights into the social relationsbetween Hitler and his followers.     

'Is he still alive, or long since dead?': Loss, Absence and Remembrance in Nuremberg, 1945-1956

This article uses the search for the ‘missing’ Wehrmachtsoldiers in the 1950s as a prism through which to explore theways in which we might insert the notion of trauma into ourunderstanding of West Germany's status as a postwar society.In seeking to point out the connections between the ways inwhich ‘ordinary Germans’ suffered during and afterthe war on the one hand, and the inability of post-war WestGerman society to ‘confront’ the crimes of the paston the other, it argues that the traumatizing impact of warhas to be considered alongside the ideological and politicalnecessities of the Cold War and reconstruction if we are tounderstand why West German society failed to place the Holocaustat the centre of its memorial culture in the immediate post-waryears. Moreover, in pointing to the Lutheran church as a keysite of memorial politics in the post-war era, it argues forthe integration of a study of religious narratives, mentalitiesand discourses into an understanding of the evolution of thecommemorative practices of the 1950s which has hitherto beenshaped by an excessively one-sided focus on secular sites andnarratives.     

'Proactive fast-tracking' diffusion of supermarkets in developing countries: implications for market institutions and trade

Supermarkets have spread extremely rapidly in developing countriesafter the ‘take-off’ in the early to mid-1990s.Former analyses of supermarket diffusion have not adequatelyexplained the sudden burst and then exponential diffusion ofsupermarkets in the late 1990s and early 2000s. We argue thatrather than taking demand and market institutional and organizationalconditions as ‘exogenous’, as former analyses havetended to do, modern food retailers instead have treated localconditions as substantially ‘endogenous’. To enabletheir rapid growth, supermarkets undertake ‘proactivefast-tracking strategies’ to alter the ‘enablingconditions’ of entry and growth. Beside the retail investmentsthat have been extensively treated in recent literature, theseproactive strategies focus on improving the ‘enablingconditions’ via (i) procurement system modernization and(ii) local supply chain development. One important strategyretailers have used to facilitate (i) and (ii) is to form symbioticrelationships with modern wholesale, logistics and processingfirms. An example we address is ‘follow sourcing’,where a transnational retailer encourages transnational logisticsand wholesale firms with whom the retailer is working in homemarkets, to locate to the developing country. This is a spurto globalization of services in support of retail. Follow-sourcinghas been treated for example in the automobile manufacturessector (follow-sourcing from spare parts manufacturers)—butnot in the food sector. A second important strategy is thatof multi-network-sourcing, in which supermarkets source fromnational, regional and global networks. We analyze that strategyhere, adding to the literature which to date has touched onthis theme only scantly, and for the first time identify typicalpaths, present preliminary evidence (from Central America andIndonesia) concerning this multi-sourcing-network strategy anddiscuss trade implications. One of these is the move to primacyof South–South trade in supermarket sourcing—a newdimension of globalization. By introducing this link of retailertransformation and trade into the literature, we hope to spura new line of research that is timely in light of the trade,development and globalization debates in developing countries.     

A Matter of Foreign Policy: 'Final Solution' and 'Final Victory' in Nazi Germany

The primacy of foreign policy in Nazi Germany has been debatedfor decades. This article seeks not to re-open an old debate,but focuses on the two big aims of Nazi policy: ‘FinalVictory’ and ‘Final Solution’. In order toanalyse their relationship, they are identified as war aims;there follows an examination of both the role of the war inNazi doctrine and Hitler's role in decision-making in general.It can be shown that Hitler's original war plan saw ‘FinalVictory’ as a prerequisite for the ‘Final Solution’,but that from August 1941 the implementation of the ‘FinalSolution’ followed the intention of achieving ‘FinalVictory’ through the extermination of the European Jews.‘Final Victory’ and the ‘Final Solution’thus appear as goals which illuminate the primacy of foreignpolicy in Nazi Germany.     

The Liberal Party and Patriotism in Early Twentieth Century Britain

Many historians have highlighted the role played by ‘languagesof patriotism’ in the political appeal of the BritishConservative Party in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.The present article engages with this debate by pointing tothe fact that the Liberals, in the Edwardian period at least,could also articulate patriotic languages That this was thecase is demonstrated by an examination of Liberal attitudesto the Education Act of 1902, the tariff reform controversy,and the issue of the ‘land question’. The widelyheld view that the Conservatives enjoyed a complete monopolyon patriotism is called into doubt. Furthermore, this articlecontends that the Liberal Party's use of patriotic rhetoricprovides a new means of making sense of their policies in thisperiod. These policies, it is suggested, cannot simply be understoodas expressive of a ‘new Liberal’ system of thoughtincreasingly influenced by collectivist ideas ^*I would like to thank Jon Parry for his very many helpful commentsand suggestions on earlier drafts of this article. The researchpresented here was assisted by the financial support of Christ'sCollege, Cambridge, and the Arts and Humanities Research Board.     

Editorial: Making an Impact

We promised in our last editorial (Puga and Wrigley, 2004) toreturn with news of the Journal's performance in the ISI citation‘impact factor’ rankings. That is to say, to givereaders the opportunity to gauge how the Journal is beginningto fare in the ‘market place for ideas’. June 2005saw the release of the ISI 2004 Journal Citation Reports (JCR)—thefirst year Journal of Economic Geography appears in the JCR.The result (Table 1) is remarkable. On the basis of citation‘impact factor’, Journal of Economic Geography entersthe rankings as No. 1     

1932: A Neglected Date in the History of the Decline of the British Liberal Party

There is an historical consensus that the decline of the BritishLiberal Party, whenever it began, was essentially complete by1929 or 1931 at the latest. This article suggests that the possibilityof a Liberal revival still existed in the early 1930s, but thatit was thwarted by the formalization of divisions between Liberalsand Liberal Nationals which took place in 1932. These divisionswere not accidental, but the result of clear calculations onthe part of the Liberal National leadership. It is further arguedthat the events of this year were important in determining theelectoral politics of the following three decades—dominationby a Conservative party which set out to stress its ‘liberal’credentials and to persuade the electorate that it was the logicalrepository for the country's still significant ‘Liberalvote’. Meanwhile, an independent Liberal Party survived,but one which was far smaller and less electorally powerfulthan might have been the case if the party had remained united.     

'Christ's Kingdom in Scotland': Scottish Presbyterianism, Social Reform, and the Edwardian Crisis

This article examines the response of Scottish Presbyterianreformers to the socioeconomic and political dimensions of the‘Edwardian Crisis’. For such individuals the circumstancesof the early twentieth century, despite the undoubted difficultiesthey posed, offered the opportunity to bring about a modernversion of the ‘godly commonwealth’, with the principalmeans of realizing this being Christianized social reform. Thearticle focuses on how the ‘social problem’ wasanalysed; the challenge of socialism; the solutions offered;and the ultimate fate of the ‘social gospel’ ¹I am grateful to the British Academy for a Research and TravelExpenses Grant which enabled me to visit Scottish archives andlibraries; and to my colleagues David Nash and Paul O'Flinnand this journal's editors and anonymous referees for theirconstructive comments on earlier drafts. The quote is from JohnW. Gulland MP, Christ's Kingdom in Scotland or the Social Missionof the United Free Church (Edinburgh, 1906).     

Death and the Making of West Berlin, 1948-1961

This essay traces shifts in attitudes towards death, practicesof burial, and rituals of mourning in West Berlin from the 1948currency reform to the 1961 construction of the Berlin Wall.It shows that West Berliners in the years immediately followingthe Second World War maintained an arduous devotion to theirdead—particularly the war dead. Yet as the war becamea less immediate experience over the course of the 1950s, broadcultural shifts took shape, including a renewed sense of optimismand an emerging feeling that the suffering associated with thewar could be and was being redeemed. Meanwhile, a cult of thedead long venerated as part of the very foundation of Germanculture gradually became ‘less German’ and ‘moreWestern’ over that same period. In this way, it also becamea means of distinguishing West Berlin from its Communist neighbourto the East. By focusing on shifts in perceptions and practicessurrounding death, the essay reveals part of the process bywhich moral and ethical values were reconstructed after Nazism,and how the racist collectivism of the Third Reich graduallygave way to the broadly individualist, democratic-socialisthumanism that would form the basis of an expressly West Germanpolitics and society.     

No Hammock for the Idle: The Conservative Party, 'Youth' and the Welfare State in the 1960s

The postwar ‘baby boom’ focused unprecedented attentionon young people in Britain and made ‘youth’ a newand increasingly worrying category of both social and politicalidentity. Belief in the uniqueness of postwar youth was widelyshared among political parties but it caused particular anxietyfor the Conservatives who feared that young people in the 1960swere shaped by values that predisposed them to socialism, notconservatism. This article traces the Conservative party's interactionwith ‘youth’ through an examination of the policy-makingefforts of the Young Conservatives (YCs) organization. Afterthe 1959 election, the Conservative party was anxious to retainthe support of younger voters and saw the YCs as a vehicle topublicize its commitment to them. Departing from the YCs’long-standing emphasis on social activities, the party establisheda Policy Group Scheme to integrate younger members into policy-makingand encourage a ‘youth’ perspective on key policyareas such as the welfare state. However, in 1966, the PolicyGroup Scheme ended as it became clear that young people's loyaltyto the main party was not conditional upon participation inpolicy-making and the YCs’ model of postwar conservatismdiffered very little from that of older Conservatives. Thisanalysis of grassroots discussion of the welfare state thusestablishes the limits of a distinctive ‘youth’perspective on major issues in modern conservatism such as individualfreedom and the role of the state, and contributes to recentdiscussions of the role of age and demographic structure inpostwar Britain.     

DDR Museum Berlin

In the summer of 2006 a new permanent exhibition on East Germanhistory opened its doors on the banks of the river Spree, justa frog's jump away from the Berliner Dom and the slowly disappearingPalast der Republik. The DDR Museum¹ sets out to show all facetsof life and growing up in the German Democratic Republic inbasement premises measuring just 400m². The exhibition is composed of seventeen thematic areas, rangingfrom earnest topics such as ‘border’, ‘statesecurity’ and ‘construction’ to the more diverting‘fashion’, ‘consumer goods’ and ‘holidays’.The whole space is designed as a miniature pre-fabricated housingdevelopment, the facades of which incorporate display cabinetsand drawers inviting visitors to explore their contents. Eachthematic area is given roughly the same space, and consequentlythe GDR's dozen or so popular bands get about as much room asthe Stasi.